Logic and philosophy
evolvingthoughts | March 21, 2009There are a lot of folk who think they have a handle on how to communicate science to the general public, and a lot of folk, mostly scientists, who think nobody else does. But I was reading Carl Zimmer's twittering today, about Rebecca Skoot getting a column gig for a new magazine devoted to issues of interest to women, Double X. It hit me that science journalism is not dying, it is having to adapt to a new business model.
Traditional media made its money from advertising and sales. It used a broadcast model of publishing - a single source (the printing presses or the transmitters) to many…
evolvingthoughts | March 20, 2009I am rather old fashioned, which is unsurprising since most of what I read dates from before the invention of the transistor. But I think that one can disagree with someone else without needing to call him an idiot:
This is exactly why idiots like Matthew Nisbet, who continually call for reining in of harsh criticism of religiously motivated solecisms, are floridly misguided. People can bitch about "New Atheism" all they want or they can raise their chins off their chests and actually look around at the world. The best possible way to combat atrocities of all kinds is to drag their…
evolvingthoughts | March 17, 2009I urge people to go read Russell Blackford's submission to the Human Rights consultative committee in Australia. It deals with the changes and challenges to civil liberties in the modern era and although Australia-focussed, it generalises well once you get past our odd spelling conventions and local events.
evolvingthoughts | March 15, 2009As you may have noticed, I am something of a Victorian - as well as being from that wonderful state, I also write as if I were a nineteenth century writer. It comes of reading too many of them over too long a period. I have little trouble when the parentheses separate the beginnings from the ends of sentences by two pages. But most people, those who live in the real world, don't have the patience to wade through the archaic language in which most modern English-language philosophy, both originals and translations, are written.
Now, early modern specialist Jonathon Bennett of the universities…
evolvingthoughts | March 14, 2009A while back I excerpted some Whewell on classification by types. Here is John Stuart Mill disagreeing with him, and, I think, starting off the modern literature on natural kinds.
Kinds are Classes between which there is an impassable barrier; and what we have to seek is, marks whereby we may determine on which side of the barrier an object takes its place. The characters which will best do this should be chosen: if they are also important in themselves, so much the better. When we have selected the characters, we parcel out the objects according to those characters, and not, I conceive,…
evolvingthoughts | March 11, 2009In this age the mere example of non-conformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service. Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric. Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage which it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time…
evolvingthoughts | March 11, 2009Leiter's poll has Wittgenstein beating Frege. I'm disappointed that Peirce didn't get a higher ranking, and astonished the Nietzsche did.
evolvingthoughts | March 6, 2009There's been a highly publicised conference at the Vatican about evolution. There are good and sensible things being said there, and silly ones.
The good and sensible things are that nobody questions that evolution occurs, and it is asserted that faith and science cannot conflict (which means, therefore, that faith will have to adapt to science, since science changes only in response to the evidence).
The less sensible things are that evolution is not the cause of atheism, and that those, specifically mentioning Dawkins, who claim that it does are being "scientistic", that is, practising…
evolvingthoughts | March 4, 2009An interesting article is up at the New Atlantis by Ari Schulman, arguing that we will never be able to replicate the mind on a digital computer. Here I want briefly to argue there are other reasons for this.
Transhumanists are fond of claiming that one day we will be able to download a state vector description of our brain states onto a suitably fast and sophisticated computer, and thereafter run as an immortal being in software. I want to give two reasons why this will not happen, and neither of them rely on anything like the Chinese Room, which is just a bad argument in my opinion.
Reason…
evolvingthoughts | March 1, 2009William Smellie wrote The Philosophy of Natural History in 1791, and it remained in print for over a century. It's a lovely and explicit expression of the Great Chain of Being view that all things grade insensibly from simple to perfect, and all classifications are arbitrary. This was effectively the last time in which someone could argue that from within natural history itself. I transcribe the whole chapter below the fold (it's a great way to engage the text in detail):
From Smellie, William. 1791. The philosophy of natural history. Philadelphia: Robert Campbell, pp463-469.
CHAPTER XXII.
Of…
evolvingthoughts | March 1, 2009Brian Leiter has asked who that was in the train of the New York Times declaring that it was Wittgenstein.So far, Russell is leading. Russell? My goodness, he was important but hardly the best - most read more than best, I suspect. Moore was better than Russell. As to the other leading contenders, both Quine and Rawls are good candidates, although they are recalled for rather different things. Rawls had perhaps more influence on public life than anyone, but Quine influenced generations of metaphysics and epistemology philosophers.
So in tandem, and in the comments, what was the best…
evolvingthoughts | February 26, 2009Folks, I haven't forgotten you or the promised myth posts, but I've had to do some book stuff, along with Real Life stuff. So hang tight - I'm away this weekend (and - shock! - I'm not taking the laptop with me) but I promise something meaty on Sunday evening or so, OK?
In the meantime: some X-Phi links:
Philosophy: the new x-philes, and a new podcast too
Philosophy’s great experiment
Francis Galton and the History of X-Phi
X-Phi, by the way, has nothing to do with Mulder and Scully...
evolvingthoughts | February 25, 2009This is a kind of note to myself, an aide memoire to remind me of the fact that much of the modern narrative about classification in biology before Darwin is not correct. It's also interesting that Whewell defines systematics, but most interesting is the reinforcement of the prior note that Whewell did not support essentialism. Elsewhere, in the History, he famously said that species do not transmute because they have a real existence in nature - but in context he means that they are adapted, and if they varied would cease to be. Again, no mention of essentialism. Whewell is turning out to be…
evolvingthoughts | February 21, 2009A 6th grade maths and science teacher emailed me about whether theories could become laws. Below the fold is his request and my reply. The short answer is that when laws grow up, they become theories, not the other way around.
Cameron Peters wrote:
Dr. Wilkins,
I was hoping you might be able to provide some insight on a question that is circulating amongst the NSTA email list serve concerning laws and theories. Specifically, there is some disagreement ( I would say confusion) of the difference between the two and, in particular, why a theory cannot become a law. Also, the question has arisen…
evolvingthoughts | February 17, 2009Once upon a time, I made mention, simply a mention, of a paper by one Matts Envall, which I said I would later comment on. I did so because a friend of mine, Malte Ebach, told me about him and the paper. I have yet to appropriately thank Malte. My gratitude involves a water balloon, I think.
This alone was the trigger for Envall to come along to my blog and start comment bombing. I have in my spam folder over 350 comments, most of which are cut and paste. Independently of his views, of which more anon, his behaviour - spamming, using fake email addresses and changing IP numbers to avoid bans…
evolvingthoughts | February 13, 2009Truism 6: Apart from physical kinds like basic particles, everything is in flux
Scholia: If we know things, we know them as temporary objects. An "object" is thus something within which change doesn't trigger a change of equivalence class.
We know changing things by knowing the rate of change, and the rates of change in rates of change (second order derivatives) and so on.
Commentary: Heraclitus set the western philosophical project going by asking if we could step in the same river twice. This set up the problem solved by Plato with his eternal forms (eideai) and Aristotle with his…
evolvingthoughts | February 10, 2009Theologians can be monumentally stupid when they look at things through their doctrinal spectacles, especially when it comes to science. Since they think everything is theological, it must have a theological standing, either good or bad, and so they will undergo the most amazing gymnastics to achieve this outcome. Here's an example, by Anglican Bishop Tom Frame of the Charles Sturt University theological school:
The problem I face is weariness with science-based dialogue partners like Richard Dawkins. It surprises me he is not chided for his innate scientific conservatism and metaphysical…
evolvingthoughts | February 4, 2009So there's a rather livid article in the Independent by Johann Hari, titled "Why should I respect these oppressive religions?"
Starting in 1999, a coalition of Islamist tyrants, led by Saudi Arabia, demanded the rules be rewritten. The demand for everyone to be able to think and speak freely failed to "respect" the "unique sensitivities" of the religious, they decided – so they issued an alternative Islamic Declaration of Human Rights. It insisted that you can only speak within "the limits set by the shariah [law]. It is not permitted to spread falsehood or disseminate that which involves…